Musashi - Eiji Yoshikawa [389]
Her eyes emitted a flash of light, as though all the gods and bodhisattvas of the cosmos had gathered in her person to witness the battle.
In the instant when Musashi unsheathed, Gonnosuke felt a chill go through his body. He sensed instinctively that his fate, exposed to Musashi’s sword, had already been decided, for at this moment he saw before him a man he had not seen before. Two days earlier, he had observed Musashi in a fluid, flexible mood, one that might be likened to smooth, flowing lines of calligraphy in the cursive style.
He was unprepared for the man who faced him now, a study in austerity, like a square, immaculately written character with every line and dot in place.
Realizing that he had misjudged his adversary, he found himself unable to swing into a violent attack, as he had done before. His staff remained poised but powerless above his head.
While the two men confronted each other silently, the last of the morning mist cleared away. A bird flew indolently between them and the hazy mountains in the distance. Then all at once a shriek split the air, as though the bird had plummeted to earth. It was impossible to tell whether the sound came from the sword or the staff. It was unreal—the clapping of one hand that followers of Zen talk about.
Simultaneously, the two fighters’ bodies, moving in perfect coordination with their weapons, shifted positions. The change took less time than it takes for an image to be transmitted from the eye to the brain. Gonnosuke’s strike had missed. Musashi had defensively reversed his forearm and swept upward, from near Gonnosuke’s side to a point above his head, narrowly missing his right shoulder and temple. Musashi then employed his masterful return strike, the one that had previously brought all opponents to grief, but Gonnosuke, seizing his staff near the ends with both hands, blocked the sword above his own head.
Had the sword not met the wood obliquely, Gonnosuke’s weapon would doubtless have been split in two. In shifting, he had thrust his left elbow forward and lifted his right elbow, with the intent of striking Musashi in the solar plexus, but at what should have been the moment of impact, the end of the staff was still a fraction of an inch from Musashi’s body.
With sword and staff crossed above Gonnosuke’s head, neither could advance or retreat. Both knew that a false move meant sudden death. Though the position was analogous to a sword-guard-to-sword-guard impasse, Musashi was aware of the important differences between sword and staff. A staff ostensibly had no guard, no blade, no hilt, no point. But in the hands of an expert like Gonnosuke, any part of the four-foot weapon could be blade, point or hilt. Thus the staff was far more versatile than the sword and could even be used as a short lance.
Unable to predict Gonnosuke’s reaction, Musashi could not withdraw his weapon. Gonnosuke, on the other hand, was in an even more perilous position: his weapon was playing the passive role of blocking Musashi’s blade. If he allowed his spirit to waver for so much as an instant, the sword would split open his head.
Gonnosuke’s face paled, he bit his lower lip, and oily sweat glistened around the upturned corners of his eyes. As the crossed weapons began to waver, his breathing became heavier.
“Gonnosuke!” cried his mother, her face more pallid than her son’s. She raised her torso and slapped her hip. “Your hip’s too high!” she shouted, then fell forward. Her senses seemed to have left her; her voice had sounded as though she were spitting blood.
It had appeared that sword and staff would remain locked until the fighters turned to stone. At the sound of the old woman’s cry, they came apart with a force more frightening than that of their coming together.
Musashi, slamming his heels into the ground, leaped backward a full seven feet. The interval was spanned in a flash by Gonnosuke